


Newly Local Man Baffles Doctors

by Alienea



Series: I can’t believe you guys made a musical about my trauma [2]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: lyf can drink a bottle of lighter fluid and just get drunk off of it no other side effects, lyf like a mantis shrimp can punch water and make it boil, lyfs liver regenerates a lot faster than human standard, play with me in this SPACE, theres more weird shit that didnt quite fit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23118256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alienea/pseuds/Alienea
Summary: Sometimes you take Old Norse as a language elective to flex on your fellow doctors and then you're the only person who can treat this random-ass escapee from the Yggdrasil System, and you and all the nurses in the hospital just have to deal with the crazy shit that goes on in thereAnd maybe wish that you could have an intelligently designed spine.
Series: I can’t believe you guys made a musical about my trauma [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1661734
Comments: 29
Kudos: 336
Collections: Stowaways' Shenanigans





	Newly Local Man Baffles Doctors

**Report 1**

There was a fairly set method of intake for new patients. This one had bypassed all of that by simple expedient of coming out of system, from a system that had never been very free with information sharing in the first place, and perhaps the only survivor of some sort of unspecified cataclysm that had killed the rest of their civilization.

So despite being packed and really quite unable to take another patient, much less take lead on a very, very strange case, Doctor Dave McAlister was handed one Lyfrassir Edda, right out of a ship splashed with a rainbow of horrifying guts, and told to do his best.

Perhaps he shouldn’t’ve taken Old Norse and actually gone on to be fluent in it. Then they could’ve brought in some other fucker to take this patient. But no! Here he was! Exhausted and ready to go home and this poor fuck in the bed had no vital signs that made any sense whatsoever.

McAlister let his head thunk onto the bars at the end of the hospital bed as he looked at the chart.

“So have we pulled... any medical records? From the ship? At all?” His nurse shook his head.

“Nope. We don’t even understand the language, there’s no way we’re pulling anything from it.” The nurse flicked the vital signs monitor. “I mean, this shit all says they should be dead. Who the hell keeps on breathing and having a heartbeat with a blood oxy sat hovering between 58 and 62%?” McAlister leaned back in the rolly chair hooked his legs beneath to bed to stay in place.

“You seen their x-rays? They’ve got a whole ‘nother joint in their fingers, they’re missing a whole set of ribs, and don’t get me started on the teeth or the spine.” the nurse flipped to the dental x-rays.

“Oh shit, they’ve got all 32 teeth?”

“And they’re all perfect. That’s just unnatural. Who has perfect teeth ever without any cavities?”

“Man, look at that spacing. That’s textbook perfect teeth.”

“I know! So they should be dead, they’re not, and their ship- don’t get me started, I have the condition it was supposed to be in when it came in and I do _not_ know how they survived.”

“I mean, who knows how they’re even surviving now! I don’t! Have we figured out their blood type yet? Are you here to tell me that we’ve figured out their blood type?”

“Oh. Yeah. O pos. They’re bringing in a bag of it. Not that we can tell if they need it, but hey!” The nurse frowned. “I should actually go see where they are, I didn’t bring in a blood oxygenating machine just to have no blood to use it on.” McAlister dragged himself to his feet. It was way too late in his day for this.

“Then I’m going to get a new bag of liquid nutrients and cross my fingers and hope that the MRI will show something I can actually act on.” And that the liquid nutrients weren’t causing any harm to the patient that he couldn’t see, McAlister added on inside his head. He wasn’t even sure how the patient still looked so close to their human-normal with a spine like that.

To be fair, it looked like a really well designed spine, but who had ever heard of that? A well-designed spine was a pipe dream that people wished had happened during evolution and was never going to happen. But it had happened here. Nothing made sense.

It was just weird. He hooked up another bag of IV nutrients and sighed. By all rights, the patient should be coding right now, or have passed away quietly with a lack of oxygen to the brain. Instead, they were stubbornly continuing to breathe.

And was it just the fashion, in the Yggdrasil System, to paint rainbows and such on your face and hair? Maybe it was some sort of rainbow cult that had led to the destruction of the system? He would be very excited to get a hand on the translated and decrypted files in the ship’s systems whenever they were released. Maybe they’d have his patient’s medical records!

If he was extremely lucky maybe his patient would wake up and he’d finally be able to get something out of him with whatever Old Norse he could remember. Did he even ever learn the medical terminology? Fuck. Fuck. This was going to be a shitty, shitty case to run. He should probably get dibs called on one of the cots right now. And maybe get his husband to bring in a mattress pad.

McAlister sent those texts and continued staring at the patient. When the hell was the blood going to get here. The patient did not have the vital signs to indicate they had enough blood to lose any to the blood oxygenating machine but they really, really needed that oxygen in their blood..

A group of nurses burst into the room with the blood, and shoved the MRI printouts under his nose.

“Doctor McAlister the patient has weird bones and extra organs and we have no idea what those are for and look at this,” a close-up MRI, the nurse was jabbing a finger at the eyes-

“What the fuck,” McAlister groaned in despair, “how many cones can you possibly fit in the human eye?”

“We know! And look here,” the nurse flipped through the print-outs quickly before shoving another one at him, “they’ve got, like, we think it’s an extra lung? It connects to the rest of the lungs? Why is their blood ox so low when they have an extra lung?”

“I wish I knew. I really, really wish I knew. Please get the machine set up so we can raise that.” Doctor McAlister flipped through the rest of the MRIs, letting the despair just. Slowly overtake him. Extra lung. Extra eye cones. The muscle fiber looked denser than he would have thought, based on the bone density. He wished he could get a look inside the bones, the structure was sure to be interesting. No, wait, he didn’t want to see that that would mean the patient was dead.

The machine finally got set up, the loop of blood between the patient and the machine going, and they didn’t appear to be having any negative reactions to the foreign blood. So McAlister flipped the switch and got the blood oxygenating. He watched the levels rise, and the patient’s heartbeat also began to speed up. Since it had been slow but surprisingly strong even for sleeping beforehand, he wasn’t worried.

The patient bolted out of bed, losing the blood oxygen IV, and dove to the wall. McAlister did not realize this had happened until a crack like thunder echoed through the air and the blood oxygen machine began to scream. The nurses also began to scream.

The patient was hyperventilating in a corner in the wall. McAlister was nearly certain that that wall had not had a corner before, especially as there were cracks around the edge, but that didn’t matter right now. What mattered was calming the patient and making sure that they hadn’t inadvertently injured themself with- whatever that was. He dredged up his knowledge of Old Norse.

“ _Hello? You are in a hospital, and safe. We are trying to treat you for ..._ ” McAlister swore quietly. How did you say blood oxygen saturation in Old Norse? " _Not enough... air? Breathing air? In the blood?_ ” The patient is still hyperventilating, and appears to be trying to use breathing techniques.

“ _I don’t need more [oxygen] I just - I am fine, I need food. Teeth tablets. How long have I- where am I? Why is your accent so horrible?_ ” McAlister reminds himself that the patient all-but did the equivalent of crash-landing. That’s traumatizing. The patient can be as rude as they want, as long as they survive.

“ _You’re in the_ Lotus _star system. I do not know how long you have been -_ ” Ah shit. He forgot how to say travelling. Why couldn’t he have a linguist in the room who actually studied the language? Medical privacy, sure, but. “ _...Ah, walking? Sailing... Travelling! A ship picked you up and brought you here, as you could not respond. May I ask, what hurts? How are you feeling? Do you have your doctor papers?_ ” The patient was no longer hyperventilating. The monitor showed that his blood oxygen had lowered, once again, but was holding steady around 70%. What the fuck. The nurses had at least taken a cue and filed out of the room, except for one. Good.

“ _I. I was. Escaping, the [Bifrost, Yog-Sothoth, squamous] things-_ ” the patient looks up and sees the look of blank non-comprehension on McAlister’s face. “ _Running from the apocalypse._ ” Apocalypse was a surprisingly common word in Old Norse, so at least he understood that. “ _Is it safe? Did it stop?_ ” Oh, he really didn’t have the vocabulary for that.

“ _Your system is gone. We don’t know what happened. It has not left. You will be safe, here. Please get back in bed._ ”

“ _...I do not hurt. I am just tired. Hungry. My medical records-_ ” oh. That’s how you said it. He was a dumbass. “ _Are on my ship. I can read them to you, if you do not know how._ ”

“ _... yes. That would be appreciated._ ” The patient stood up on shaky limbs, refusing the support offered, and lay back down in bed. So this was going to be a great patient to treat.

  
  
  


**Report 2**

Lyfrassir Edda was trying to check himself out of the hospital two days after entering it. McAlister walked up behind him. Edda was making a remarkably good argument for someone who only knew the written language, and mostly only the language involved in police reports. The nurse qualified for a nurse of the week award by being willing to argue in text and in written format. Edda was gesturing wildly with one hand as they wrote.

“ _Patient Edda, please return to your room. We are still doing blood tests to make sure that you have everything your blood should have._ ” Edda scribbled a note and shoved it at him. “ _Even if we don’t know the normal, we can build one. Also, your teeth pills are in your room._ ” Edda snickered and finally acquiesced to being led back. McAlister wasn’t quite sure what was funny, but assumed it was a translation error and he wasn’t going to press it.

Also, he really didn’t want to get sassed on his language skills again. He was one of the best in his class at Old Norse. It wasn’t his fault that Edda’s system refused to communicate with others. To be fair, it wasn’t Edda’s fault either.

At some point he was probably going to have to tell Edda that they were the only confirmed survivor. He wasn’t a licensed anything to do with the brain. Why couldn’t a psychiatrist or a therapist or someone else also have decided to learn Old Norse? Why was it all linguists and then him?

Edda smacked him with another note. It’s only been a day since they got it and it’s already half out. Why is the one survivor of the apocalypse of a system incapable of shutting up? 

“Have I found anyone better at translation yet-- _Hey. You’re lucky there was a doctor who speaks this language. Be polite._ ”

“ _Give me my tablet._ ”

“ _We need to get your medical records first._ ”

“ _Give me decent pain medications._ ” McAlister thunked his head against the door of Edda’s room. He really didn’t want to reopen the argument of Edda’s system’s shitty, shitty pain med dispensing methods.

“ _We only prescribe naproxen here. It’s not -- free? Easy to get?"_

“ _Over the counter. That’s your problem. I had bottles of it in my ship. Give me those. You complain about my blood and my lungs and my spine, give me my medications._ ” Edda hopped into his bed and started scribbling out what looked like an essay. McAlister was not excited, but at least he got a chance to sit down and close his eyes while Edda scribbled. They had gone from scared and barely talking to refusing to stop writing essays on everything, and McAlister wasn’t a psychiatrist, let’s get that clear, but this was definitely a coping mechanism and he’d been pulled off everything else so the least he could do was actually read what Edda wrote.

Hopefully one of his friends would be like oh sure I’ll mildly violate ethics laws so you can rely between us and get this weird medical cryptid some actual therapy and mental health care.

McAlister opened his eyes again to watch Edda write. They had been remarkably patient, all things considering, about the battery of tests that had been ordered in the past two days. No one knew how the weird third lung worked. Edda insisted that it was normal, and everyone had one, and demonstrated by holding his breath for over an hour after some intense hyperventilation.

McAlister and the nurses had tried to tell them that they had proved their point, but Edda was apparently also very stubborn, and held on until they finally, finally took a breath in and make everyone attending heave a sigh of relief.

Edda has also scared the on-call nurse last night when McAlister had been able to go home, since he was stable. It had not been fun to get a call at one in the morning that the patient had fucking cat eyes. Who had heard of tapetum lucidum in a human? What the hell had been happening in the Yggdrasil system? Should the whole place have been investigated for crimes against ethical experimentation and shut down? Maybe! Probably! If McAlister heard the phrase “ _Odin’s forefathers thought that it would be best to_ ” one more time he was going to lose it. He was going to find a mad scientist, steal their time travel machine, and use it to go back and shake Odin’s whole line of ancestors and ask them what the hell they were thinking.

Edda never seemed to realize anything was weird about his anatomy. He complained about the lights, and after bringing in multiple different types of lights they finally realized that he could see into the UV and infrared spectrum, and gave up and got him UV blocking glasses. Fucking extra cones. McAlister didn’t even want to imagine what colors he might be seeing or how badly all the different whites in the hospital probably matched.

McAlister realized that Edda had gone through three pages of paper. Were they intending to hand it over? What sort of essay was this? He hadn’t even taken the calcium tablets. It had taken forever to figure out what Edda meant when they kept on trying to explain needing a supplement for their teeth.

Which was another thing, but actually McAlister thought that self-healing teeth was a perk that anyone who had as much weird shit going on inside as Edda should get.

Their vision should probably get tested. That was definitely out of McAlister’s hands. Please, please let it be out of McAlister’s hands. One of the nurses came in with the cart of lunches, and passed a tray over to Edda, who gave her a thumbs up that transitioned into an okay symbol, which had become their shorthand for thanks.  
McAlister could’ve hugged the nurse when he was handed his own tray, but that would’ve been inappropriate, so he settled for an effusive thanks and quickly digging in. He’d gotten halfway through his own meal when he heard the patient settle back. Edda had what was becoming a habit- they’d save the dessert to have at the same time as anyone who had eaten with him. McAlister felt like they could call this a habit when it had happened all three times he’d snatched a meal at the same time as Edda.

Edda went back to writing as he probably waited for McAlister to finish eating. McAlister was looking forward to this dessert- a nice mint chocolate cake, one of the only things that the cafeteria made well. Edda had looked like he was experiencing a religious revelation the first time he had chocolate, and after some talk McAlister had found out that the Yggdrasil system apparently had agriculture that did not sustain the cocoa bean.

A fucking travesty, really.

McAlister finally finished, and they dug into their cakes at the same time. They were delicious, delicious cakes. When they finished, McAlister started updating Edda’s chart and trying to figure out what tests should be run next.

He got hit with a notepad.

He looked up and Edda had hives all over their face and they were starting to look very swollen.

He dove across the room taking the emergency epi-pen out of his pocket and jabbing it into Edda. Fuck, would epinephrine even work on Edda? Should he have waited? It wasn’t like he couldn’t live without breathing for more than a fucking hour. But that was with light activity, what if that made it worse? Edda scribbled something on the notepad and passed it over.

“ _You thought that burning was a normal sensation with mint and you didn’t need to complain about it._ ” Edda nodded and scribbled another note to hand over. “ _I’m not- what is that word? Look, I’m not making fun of you, I’m just surprised you never realized before. Unless mint is another thing that you didn’t have._ ” Edda gives him a sardonic look. “ _Oh, fuck off. Now I have to do ..._ allergy _testing on you. Test for things that also make it hard to breathe and the itch and swollen feeling._ ” Edda flipped him off.

McAlister could not wait until he was someone else’s problem.

  
  


**Report XXX**

“I just think that I shouldn’t have to keep on coming back here to get my naproxen. I’ve been doing this for ten years.”

“Take the prescription and fuck off, Edda.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you are a doctor or know anything about human biology and want to comment telling me about how none of this is possible and wouldn't work with anatomy, thanks, I'm stealing it for if I ever add another section to this fic.


End file.
